


the world where we live

by Lena (Karo)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Adopted Children, F/F, Feelings, Immortal Angst, Immortal space lesbians rescuing the vulnerable, Lesbians in Space, Non-Sexual Slavery, Orphans, Post-Season/Series 10 Finale, Season/Series 10 Spoilers, how to make a family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-05-14 08:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14766173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karo/pseuds/Lena
Summary: There comes a time, pressed closer than close into Heather, reeling out into time and space itself - when Bill starts to hear the sound of suffering.“I can hear someone crying,” says Bill.“Let’s go get them,” says Heather.-In which Bill and Heather save the vulnerable, adopt some children and make a home.





	1. Hei'lath

**Author's Note:**

> So this story is something that been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while. With the news from the novelisations suggesting that Bill and Heather eventually go back to Earth and grow old together I thought this would be one the ways they got there, the long way round.
> 
> I imagine that Bill would be very connected to anyone who had been violated the same way she was, especially kids.  
> I also think she'd make a great mentor to other orphaned, abandoned children, especially the queer ones. 
> 
> And so, the idea of Bill Pott's as an immortal space angel was born.
> 
> Enjoy.

There comes a time, pressed closer than close into Heather, reeling out into time and space itself — when Bill starts to hear the sound of suffering. 

“I can hear someone crying,” says Bill.

“Let’s go get them,” says Heather.

 

In her 13th year, Hei’lath is taken, cut, sewn and stitched into metal and new living flesh, to serve food, to clean, to look beautiful in the eyes of her Lord. 

Her memories are replaced, carefully. Moulded into the ideal form, the ideal servant.

The others assure her it’s better this way, but Hei’lath knows, every time she is wakes from her brief dreamless sleep, that there’s something important she’s forgotten.

-

Time passes slowly and surely, the rhythm of her small life steady and constant as her Lord’s demands upon her service, her submission. 

In the kitchen she makes tea as she always does, except today Nada has pressed a capsule into her hands.

Inside Hei’lath finds the memory of her sister Tei’lath, one small tablet, and a message.

Hei’lath stares for the longest time at her sister’s face with it’s wide eyes and big mouth and perfectly plain shameless skin.

(Tei’lath is a cloth maker, a spinner, Tei'lath has sent the capsule in her wares, Tei'lath loves her, Tei'lath wants her to be free)

-

That night Hei'lath serves tea as she always does.

The next day the Lord is dead.

The minor Lords squabble for power, one claims the throne by killing two others.

By sunset Hei’lath is discovered.

By nightfall Tei’lath is dead.

-

Hei’lath is dragged out to the dark plains, and bound down in the Pit, a hole so deep, she can barely see the sky.

It is there, left amongst the rotting dead, that she finds the image tucked into her clothes, her sisters face, smiling.

She plays it, watches the light spill out across the darkness, holographic likeness alive and moving.

It is then the howl escapes her.

She sobs so long that she cannot feel anything except the darkness, the cold damp earth, her own violated body shaking in exhaustion and fear, then hunger, then thirst.

Her agony is total.

Time passes so quickly and so slowly. 

Time has no meaning at all.

-

She hears the sound of water dripping.

Then, more water, flowing across the ground, and forming, moving.

Death come to take her.

“Hello,” says Death, “I heard you crying,”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder, Hei’lath finds she cannot fight.

“Would you like to get out of here?” Hei’lath cannot nod, not any more. She wills her surrender. Let it be done.

Tendrils of hair brush her face as Death lays a gentle kiss on her cheek, and Hei’lath feels the water, rise, up as if within her, as if she is washed away.

And then,

Hei’lath stands, her body whole and strong, there are two women standing in front of her, they’re holding hands.

“Hello,” says one, “I’m Bill,”

“I’m Heather,” says the other.

“Would you like to get out of here?” asks Bill.

Hei’lath finds she can speak, “Yes,” she says.

And so, she goes.

 

Bill and Heather hold her, and the sky is bigger and brighter and more beautiful than Hei’lath ever imagined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought it was strange how Heather came for Bill only when she was on the brink of death, and not any time in the ten years of tears Bill would have shed before.
> 
> But, of course, removing someone at the time of death makes more sense in terms of keeping timelines and for story purposes I've decided that this is the case
> 
> This story could really go anywhere in terms of the people Bill and Heather rescue. Please let me know if you enjoyed it or have any requests for scenarios.


	2. An interlude

Hei’lath is so small.

Bill had forgotten - being so far away from normal. (Heather and her spend so much time abstracted, not quite corporeal, certainly not linear). She’s forgotten that children can be so small. 

They gather Hei’lath into the stars - and Bill knows, with the certainty the comes from being no longer quite human and remembering her deeply human childhood, that she cannot allow this child to become like her, like Heather.

They’ve come so far, the two of them - seen more of the universe than she’d ever dreamed, even when she’d been with the Doctor. And it’s been a blessing - more than she’d dared hope after all those years trapped In the asylum - then - well. She still doesn’t think about what happened next. 

But they’ve been around, her and Heather. Around and around again - falling across skylines, merging with stars, seeing new planets rise, and old ones fall and vice versa and looked for peace and finding war, they’ve stopped a few, and still - they travelled on. Loved. Healed. Been together, the only way Bill knows how to be together, being present, being here. She likes to think her Mother would have said, “The easy part is showing up, the hard part is whether you choose to stay,” and they’ve stayed, the both of them, together.

Which is why - when faced with a traumatised child, orphaned like Bill was orphaned - that she knows she will give this child everything she has.

Bill will make sure Hei’lath will never have to live like Bill had to. Shuffled around, fostered out of pity, an object of scorn and casual dismissal.

When she looks into Heather’s eyes they both know it’s time - to rest down, to settle. If only for a little while.

To stop, and make a home.


	3. Nardole's Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is something in waiting for death, Nardole, thinks.
> 
> A lot of things really.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience dear readers. This chapter is dedicated to Moonlightkitten whose suggestion inspired it. I hope you enjoy.

There is something in waiting for death, Nardole, thinks.

A lot of things really,

He is making sandwiches for small children and teaching them poker with cards made from old books because of course he is.

Nardole tries not to look at the children.  
Of course, he sees them, smiles back at their earnest faces.  
Calms their nightmares.

But he cannot look too closely, he knows, because if he does he’s going to get attached.

(the truth is he’s already attached, from the moment Alit put her small hand in his he was a goner.)

 _Damn the Doctor_ , he thinks, for making him such a softie. _And damn River_ for making him follow that man to his second death.

 

—

He misses Bill.

Doesn’t think of her too closely, but when he closes his eyes he can still see her - whole and beautiful, magnificent grin, bright eyes.

Then falling, always falling with a hole in her chest.

He hears the _thunk, thunk_ of her metal steps as she walks away, following her heart to do what needed to be done. Brave to the end.

As it should be, really.

But no, not as it should be.

Bill should not be a Cyberman.

The Doctor should not be dead on floor 507.

But they are.

 

—

He misses the Doctor because he thinks it may have been a few centuries of friendship all up and he took it for granted and now the Doctor’s dead and Nardole’s not scared for himself anymore.

He’s scared for the children, for the rest of time. What the rest of the universe is going to do without that man.

He hopes maybe he’s wrong, that he somehow made it.

Nardole will never know.

Nardole braids hair, and cleans wounds, and argues with adults he raised from infancy over farming practices and how to use the computer.

Nardole plays cards, eats vegetables, makes jam, starts a thriving black market (just like the old days).

Nardole has friends, family, annoying neighbours, and more adopted nieces and nephews than he can count, his own shack where he can tinker in peace, an almost piano and an old boot stand to put his umbrella in.

Nardole trains the next guard that watches over the lifts, teaches them how to fight for when the time comes. He is a pillar of the community.

He’s important, respected, and is extremely busy, thank you very much.

 

Nardole is utterly alone.

 

 _This_ is the burden the Doctor never talked about.

The burden of time.

The passage of movement around him while he remains unchanged, remembering where others forget.

He gets it now - feels closer to the Doctor an age after losing him. Hates it.

Still.

He’s here. There’s something to be said for that.

  
—

He makes the children sandwiches, ploughs the fields, and watches the pretend sky.

He can’t fathom how he ended up here, exactly. He was a criminal once, and then there was River, and Hydroflax, and night on Delorium, and River asked Nardole to look after Doctor and the Doctor asked Nardole to the look after the children and here he is.

Centuries of time travel and danger and death and the only thing he really knows is that there is no getting out of here, that at some point, whatever peace he has will shatter.

So he watches his children grow, then age, then die.

Nardole’s ageless android body remains so.

 He’s never felt so old.

 

—

Nardole can feel it - the inexorable movement of time, of death, drawing closer.

He’s watching the birth of the 3rd generation of this floor - the grandchildren of the children he raised - and he’s starting to wonder, how many more children will he raise? And in the end, fail to save?

But then he hears Eia and Nadia laughing as they play, chasing each other around the orchard and he puts that thought away.

There are parts of him that are literally falling apart (he can’t get the parts) and here he is brooding like the Doctor over his children, his grandchildren.

“Uncle Nardole,” they call to him, “Uncle Nardole, come and play."

 And he does, for a time.

 

—

He’s holding baby Luca in the morning sun as her parents coo over her resemblance to him and he finds he _cannot._

He cannot do this.

A part of him snaps, literally, maybe.

He hands Luca back and stumbles to where he knows the lifts are - nobody is guarding them anymore because there is nobody left alive that _remembers_ \- and he collapses.

 

When he wakes — a young girl is standing over him, pliers and wire in her hands. Her name is Luca, she is 14 years old, and the Cybermen are coming.

 What’s left of his family is small and starved, he wasn’t around to fix the weather system when it broke 10 years ago.

There are no small children - they tell him a pox killed most of them some years ago. He feels relieved that he won’t have to watch them die, hates himself only slightly.

Still, there is hope on their faces. The sleeping man has woken. Tales of uncle Nardole have turned him into a heroic figure - and isn’t that what he always wanted? He snorts at his own hubris.

He knows that this time there will be no getting out. The Cybermen are already above them, drilling down.

 

Nardole plans his attack with a rusted axe he uses to pull up the cables at the edge of the habitat and hooks himself in.

He uses his last power cell, his heart, to power the computer - hacks the system and prepares the explosions.

It’s the same plan from all those years ago but worse now, because it really is the end, and all he has left to fight with is rusted metal and the memories of long-dead children.

 

He fights. Watches Luca fall mid-strike against a Cyberman, her dark hair ground under its metal heel.

He hear’s the war cries of his family, hears them turn to cries of pain, to screams, to nothing.

 Nardole is still hacking at Cybermen because what else can he do? They don’t want him, he hasn’t got a heart. He burned it up to watch his children grow and now they’re _gone gone gone gone gone_.

 

A Cyberman pulls his nerve line from the back of his neck.

He falls, paralysed in mud, power cell fading.

 

He cannot see the sky.

 

—

Water is dripping.

A face looms above him.

Nardole stares unseeing until some parts of his memory surface.

“Bill,” he remembers her, but it can’t be…

“Nardole,” she says, her eyes are wet, with tears or water he doesn’t know.

“Bill,” he says again, because if he’s seeing her then that’s it, then, isn’t it? His death means going backwards, to remembering a sweet girl who died so long ago.

“I heard you crying,” she says.

“Was I?”

She nods, looking as if her heart might break. He wants to tell her not to be sad. He doesn’t want her to be sad. Instead, he says, “How’s the Doctor?”

She smiles at him, a soft sad thing. “We left him in the TARDIS, I -.” She breaks off - looks up at someone else Nardole can’t see.

Nardole nods or tries to. “Good, he says, “that’s good.”

 And then Luca is standing above him, alive somehow and whole.

“Hello Uncle,” she says, “Would you like to get up now?” She’s holding his hand and then - he remembers.

He’s standing, whole and strange, his heart beating.

He turns and Bill is still there, still standing and smiling, next to a girl with a mess of blond curls, a star in her eye.

“The pilot,” he says,

“Hello,” she says, she’s smiling at him, “I’m Heather.” Bill is standing next to her. They’re holding hands. They haven’t aged a day.

He turns to Bill.

“You’re alive,” he says, stupidly.

Bill grins at him and then tackles him in a hug.

“I’m sorry it took me so long, to get back, to find you.”

He hugs her back, honestly, he’s missed her.

 

“It’s alright,” he says, and it’s not, really, but she is. “I missed you."

 

He breathes in deeply for the first time in years.


	4. A house, a home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a house by a river. 
> 
> In which Nardole and Luca are welcomed home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know its been an age. Thank you so much to the kind comments who encouraged me to finish this part off and put it up.

There is a house by a river. The tiled roof glows warm in the afternoon sun, the white wash glows, reflecting the overcast sky. Brilliant green grass runs down a tumbling slope towards flowerbeds at the bottom of the garden. The cottage flowers shiver in the breeze, jacaranda fall on the soft earth.  
  
At the window, blue curtains. Inside, warm light.  
  
“Welcome home,” says Bill.  
  
—  
  
Bill leads Nardole and Luca across the hearth and into the kitchen, it’s small, cluttered with plates and cups and herbs hanging from the ceiling. A scrubbed wooden table takes up most of the room, in the corner there’s a fire going. At the sink, a young girl with dark eyes watches him curiously.  
  
Bill pulls out chairs and they all settle down at the kitchen table.  
  
Luca is shivering, dead quiet, and Bill is already pulling out blankets and wrapping them around Luca, then him.  
  
The kettle clicks off after it finishes boiling.  
  
He takes Luca’s hand under the table, she leans into him. The last familiar presence in the shattered remains of her life.  
  
“I could kill for a cup of tea,” he says, at last.  
  
But it’s already being served, by Heather, and the other girl, who Nardole knows is called Hei’lath because he’s connected to all of them now. He smiles at her but he’s not sure it comes out right because she frowns, and then steps back.  
  
Bill takes his hand while Heather serves tea. Hei’lath comes and sits next to Luca, whispers something to her.  
  
There is a pause. Because Nardole doesn’t know what to say. What do you say when everyone already knows? Nardole is no stranger to vulnerability, but the idea of sharing everything, the minutia of his life, his failure?  Then Luca smiles, just slightly, at something Hei’lath says and Nardole finds he can breathe again.  
  
Heather sits down next to Bill, close. They both gaze at him - Bill puts down her tea.  
  
Finally, he asks “So… how long has it been for you?”  
  
Bill and Heather glance at each other - then turn back to him.  
  
“A while,” says Bill, “it’s been, I don’t even know how long. And for you?”  
  
“The better part of 200 years.”  He thinks, he can’t be sure.  
  
“A long time,” says Heather, “to be left behind.”  
  
A shadow passes over Bills face, and something silent passes between them.  
  
“I wasn’t left - “ but Nardole breaks off, because he was, in the end. But no - he chose, he chose to take the children upstairs, to wait it out. To be there. A stronger person, the Doctor had called him. He gazes at the last child in his care, Luca is exhausted, traumatised, she has lost everything. He doesn’t feel like the stronger person. He clears his throat.  
  
“I chose, I chose to stay.” He smiles at Luca, who meets his eyes, then looks away, down at her hands.  
  
“I know,” says Bill, whose hand squeezes his own. There’s so much, so much _kindness_ in those eyes. Nardole doesn’t deserve it, never did. And Bill - Bill was broken, she was dead in the worst way. Sometimes he would wake in the night, in those first years, dreaming he could hear her screams from that charred landscape, and the Doctor, he could hear the Doctor’s cries of pain or was it triumph? Nardole had never known, and now - the patter of rain against the window makes Nardole start.  
  
Rain. Real rain.  
  
“I know,” says Bill, and she hugs him, fiercely, just as she always did.  
  
And that is how he knows that she, that this, is real.  
  
There is only so many times a cybernetic heart can break, thinks Nardole, surely. But he draws back, collecting himself. Smiling at Bill, brilliant, magnificent Bill who is beaming back at him through her grief, through his. He nods at Bill, turns, and he looks at Luca.  
  
Luca looks up at him, and he sees the world they have lost in her eyes. And there’s nothing to be said for that except,  
  
“I’ll take care of you,” he tells her. “You don’t know me, I know. But I knew your parents, and your parent’s parents, and theirs before them. I’ll look after you,” and there, on the table between them, a plate of sandwiches. He pushes the plate towards her. “And sandwiches,” he says, “I’ll make you sandwiches. Always loved a sandwich, me, and this one,” he says, pointing at Bill, “she’s great at chips.” He smiles at Bill, then, feeling the warmth of chatter from lifetimes ago. He turns to Luca “Only if you want,” he says.  
  
 Luca stares at him, stares right into his soul. He lets her look, bares as much as he can stand to. Let her know, then, the kind of person he his. She has every right not to trust him or any of them, psychic bond or no.  
  
Luca blinks, and seems to come to a point of resolution.  
  
She takes a sandwich.  
  
Bill relaxes back into Heather, just slightly.  
  
“I’ve always wanted another sister,” says Hei’lath, as if that settles it.  
  
Perhaps it does, thinks Nardole, he drinks his tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is about all I have for this wonderful found family at the moment, any suggestions, please let me know.


End file.
